Ansil Saunders was also the person who took Dr. Martin Luther King to the mangroves, in one of his boats, to meditate and write his famous last speach. He says that King knew he was about to die, and also wrote or at least outlined his eulogy at that same time.
As for boating, he has one finished boat in his shop and one under construction. These runabouts are beautiful. The wood for the topsides of the boat is French marine plywood and painted with an awlgrip paint. The light wood on the transom and some of the other woodwork is from a local tree, Horsemeat...... The dark wood on the picture below is 100 year old mahogany.
Mr. Saunders built this boat as trade for his daughter's dentistry training. A boat takes about 6 months, with $12k worth of material, the rest his skilled labor, for a sale price of around $40k. Here are Mr. Saunders and Luke.
In looking for a web link to Mr. Saunders, I found this great article. http://laststands.kennedywarne.com/tag/bimini Not only does it talk about Mr. Saunders life, but has a great article and pictures of the shark lab! Well worth looking at if you are interested!
We walked along the beach for awhile --- yes, we ARE in paradise!
Smokey is still contemplating her fate. Most days it's not too bad, especially when she can sit and watch the seagulls. Those ears are turned back towards me, just in case I tell her to stay in the cockpit. She's a good girl for the most part. (looks like a stuffed sack-o-potatoes-kiddy, doesn't she!)
She's almost as interested in the fishing boat activity behind our boat, at the govenment dock. This boat full of about 20 fishermen came in yesterday in the howling wind - it was amazing to watch her finally dock with the help of little runabouts and men on the dock. These fishing boats are away from home for as long as 3 months at a stretch, looking for lucreative spots to fish. As with all fishing boats here, there is the mother boat that collects and flash freezes the catch (lobster, conch, or grouper, usually). This is a large fishing boat by Bahamian standards. I expect there are at least 12 small boats associated with her. The little boats search out each day, fishing (that means diving and hand collecting the goods). They swarm around the mother boat like flies, bringing in the catch and sometimes, I think, just swarming. It's noisy. AND they keep their big spotlight on all night, pointed directly into our berth. oh, and they run that damn generator all night, too. Oh, well, so paradise may have a few little snags. We'll still take it!
Our stay in this part of paradise may end tomorrow. Rain and wind squalls are predicted today, but a good change to light wind (in the right direction!) tomorrow. As long as this holds, we'll head out onto the banks for an overnight stay anchored on the shallow Great Bahama Banks, usually only 8-12 ft in depth. The next day we'll be in West Bay, the western side of New Providence Island, home of Nassau (on the eastern shore). We don't anticipate a visit there, just an overnighter en route to the Exuma chain of islands.
Take a look at this link - the photo and my explanation may be a good way to show where are and where we're going. See the gray mass at the left top? Florida.
See the light blue all over the place? the Banks. The western and southern expanse of light blue - Great Bahama Bank.
See large landmass in the middle of the Great Bahama Bank? that's Andros.
If you look northwest from the north tip of Andros, into the little bulge of bank, there is a small dot of land, nearer to FL. That's Bimini.
Our trip tomorrow takes us east, across the blue shallow bank to almost where the dark blue water starts. That is the Tongue of the Ocean (pretty appropriately named, huh!). This water is thousands of feet deep. We will anchor just before the water gets deep.
The trip the next day takes us SE, across the dark blue water, to the small island of New Providence.
That's the plan! Hope it makes sense.
This also means probably no internet for a couple of weeks. I"ll stay in contact as I can~
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